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Date:         Mon, 05 Apr 93 09:51:46 EST
From: HARVEY%UCONNVM.BITNET@Sdsc.Edu (Steve)
Subject:      Coleman, belatedly....
To: socgrad%ucsd.edu@Sdsc.Edu (Friends)
I finally got around to reading the Coleman article, and found it, at least,
"intriguing." My major criticism is that he exaggerates the distinction between
"primordial" and "purposively constructed" social organization: I believe that
they are at best aspects of a continuum rather than dichotomous categories. The
fundamental dynamic is the same in both cases: People, facing an uncertain and
challenging world, strategically interact to create shared understandings and
cooperative alliances (exercising differential individual and group power, thus
"skewing" the form of the understandings and alliances in favor of those who
managed to capture strategic advantage), generating in the process social insti
tutions more subtle and complex than any of them could have conceived or
"intentionally" constructed: i.e., the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Thus the well-founded skepticism many of you have (virtually) voiced con-
cerning the efficacy of "social engineering." But, since social reality is, af-
ter all, a function of interacting human endeavor, and since that endeavor is
goal-oriented (as it is with all biological entities), whether we like it or
not, we all DO "believe" in the efficacy of social engineering, or at least act
as though we do. All political agendas attempt to intentionally affect the form
of social organization. Most of us are in sociology because we believe we can
"make a difference," and because we believe that people HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY
to try to AFFECT THE WORLD FOR THE BETTER! We can quibble about whether those
sentiments are equivalent to a belief in social engineering, but again, the di-
fference is more a matter of degree than anything else. I think Coleman's attem
pt can best be summed up as more sophistocated than most, but not nearly humble
enough. Of course, he's not being nearly as arrogant as Marxists implicitly are
being when they suggest that revolution (e.g., TOTAL overhaul) is inherently
good (they fail to recognize that capitalism, for all of its evils, can conceiv
ably be replaced with something worse, and, considering both historical evidens
e and human fallibility, probably will be in any wholesale attempt). But that's
another story.    -Steve Harvey    Harvey@uconnvm